Alizon wrote:MaxxQ wrote:I have to wonder if the SLN can afford the time it would take to design a completely new warship, or warships. Seems to me that at a minimum, it would take somewhere on the order of 18 months just to get a new design drawn up. That's best case, as in (in no particular order):
1) No one tries to bring politics into the design process.
2) The SLN is *capable* of designing a ship. They haven't had a new design in decades, AFAIK - only upgrades to existing ships.
3) The SLN has the money to pay for design and construction.
4) The SLN gets it through its skull that there's a *need* for new designs, or newer upgrades.
Frankly, I don't hold out any hope for *any* of those.
Well, the Solarian League will have a lot of challenges to overcome in the coming years, but I doubt it's going to take many more Manty victories to begin to convince the majority of the people who need to be convinced that they have a serious problem and that change is needed. The fact that it's becoming ever more clear that even Manty medium combatants, like Heavy Cruisers can take on SLN SD's with a good chance of success should begin to drive the point home.
Certainly the Solarians haven't designed a new SD in a long time but they have recently introduced new classes of smaller vessels up to BC in size fairly recently since these are the vessels most needed to keep the systems around the League in line.
And as I said earlier, just because there are only a few yards which routinely build military vessels, doesn't imply that there aren't a LOT of yards which could.
My suggestion earlier was a designed phased approach moving from Phase I which is simply upgrades to existing vessels to turn them into missile pod tugs with enough fire control, CM's and Point defenses to have a reasonable shot at being somewhat effective, moving on the Phase II construction which takes those existing designs and modifies them with the design intent to make them even better pod tugs which some pods able to be held within the wedge.
Phase III construction incorporates probably a 60% to 70% new design but still borrowing from earlier designs for such things a heavy structural components, power distribution systems and such but with the goal of making them into the most effective external pod carrying vessels they can be.
It wouldn't be until Phase IV where you'd begin to see truly and completely new designs created from the ground up and it's at this point that, hopefully, SLN effective missile sizes have shrunk sufficiently to allow true podlaying or partial podlaying capabilities.
I see each of these phases lasting from one to a year and a half long. All of which will close the gap with the RMN and RHN but none of which will come close to actually catching them. But if the Solarians can harness their vastly superior industrial capability and resources, it is possible that the can build and crew enough of these vessels with enough capability to allow their numbers to begin to tell.
Okay, I can see what you're saying, but at best, you don't see anything new that could have even a minor chance of taking on the GA for a minimum of four years - or as much as six years (or more), using your time estimates above. Do the Sollies *have* that kind of time? I don't think so, but I could be wrong.
Especially since in that time, the GA will be cranking out 4th gen wallers, probably hybrids between Manty/Grayson and Havenite tech. The GA certainly isn't going to sit around waiting for the SLN to play catch-up. They'll probably also start constructing new gen ships below the wall - after all RFC has already said that ships such as the Roland are basically interim designs, and with Manticore having more or less a clean slate to start with, as well as combat experience with current designs, I'm sure they've already got a lot of the new design work fairly close to completion.
I give it another 6-8 months before new construction actually starts - and that's just at Manticore. There's a chance *some* new construction might start sooner at Bolthole, or other Haven yards.